Something I struggle with is the timing of how we view any young player.
When I say that, I’m talking specifically about when the bar rises or lowers for a player.
I’ll give you a prime example: JT Miller. I felt he was a legit player and really liked him as a prospect. But I probably pegged him as more of a 15-20 goal, 40-45 point player. Warts and criticisms aside, his offensive production has been more than that.
Sometimes you have a guy who comes out of the gate fast and then fades with time.
Other times, you have a guy who takes a little longer, like Zibanejad, who hits his next level at 25 or 26.
Then you have guys who yo-yo a bit, like Skjei. He looked like a guy who could be a third pairing defenseman when he was drafted, then he kind of overachieved and skyrocketed expectations, and now he’s almost settling back into his original expectation.
That leads me to our 2018 draft. When we made our selections, my feeling was that we were really focused on the long game. I didn’t expect any of our picks in the first two rounds to be in the NHL the fastest or necessarily having the earliest impact.
In many ways I still feel that way, though Kravtsov, Miller and Lundkvist have come together so nicely thus far, it can sometimes be hard to not want to raise expectations and speed up the timeline a little.
But this situation is a much-needed reminder that while the expectations changed primarily due to how fast they came out of the date, we still have to accept that these guys are still longer term investments.
